“I don’t want to be your bodyguard,” Hart admitted. He hadn’t been certain if his coworkers had been telling the truth or just teasing him about that crush, but he hadn’t wanted to take the chance that it was the truth and Wendy got her feelings hurt.

      And she would get hurt if she made the mistake of falling for him. His ability to trust and love were gone.

      Long gone…

      He had nothing left to give anyone but Felicity.

      Wendy expelled a shaky breath that stirred Felicity’s hair. But the little girl didn’t move. She’d fallen fast asleep in the arms of a stranger.

      Hart couldn’t believe how his daughter had taken to Wendy Thompson. Felicity was always so shy, but never more so than around women. Her mother hadn’t ever been very patient with her. Monica never would have allowed Felicity to touch her hair. She would have been afraid the child would mess it up or make it sticky.

      But Wendy hadn’t cared. As if she’d sensed the child’s fear, she had smiled reassuringly at her. And Hart had felt a strange twinge in his chest—one that he felt again just staring at the two of them.

      “Good,” she said. “Tell Parker that you can’t.”

      “Already did,” he informed her. “But he refused. Said he had no one else to give the assignment to.” All the other team members had already been assigned someone to protect. Hart suspected Parker, like everyone else in the RCPD, had heard the rumors about Wendy’s crush. Now that crush could be used to explain his presence in her life; they could claim he was her boyfriend—just as she had already told her father.

      She shook her head. “I don’t need a bodyguard,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

      “Didn’t you hear what the assistant DA said?” he asked. Frustration with her stubbornness had him raising his voice. But when Felicity stirred against her, he lowered it when he continued. “For Luther to get off, the eyewitness isn’t the only one he needs to take out.”

      Wendy tightened her arm around his daughter and lowered her voice to a whisper. “He doesn’t need to take me out. Just the evidence.”

      Hart nodded. “That’s true. I’m sure he could get to anyone else in your department to get it thrown out.” He would either pay them or threaten them.

      Neither of those options would work on someone like Wendy, though. On someone so stubborn.

      Her face flushed with indignation, turning nearly as red as her hair. “He can’t get to anyone else in my department,” she protested. “He does not have an evidence tech on his payroll.”

      Hart snorted at her naivete. “Then how have all his previous cases got thrown out?” Luther damn well did have someone working for him. Hell, he had a lot of someones working for him.

      So nobody could be trusted.

      “I don’t know about the evidence in his previous cases,” Wendy said, “but I know nobody’s getting to this evidence but me.”

      He narrowed his eyes as he studied her face. “You’ve hidden it somewhere?”

      “That prior evidence disappeared from the evidence room,” she said.

      “So this evidence is not there?” he asked.

      She shook her head. “It’s somewhere safe that won’t compromise the chain of evidence.”

      Maybe she wasn’t as naive as he’d thought. “Obviously you don’t trust your coworkers as much as you claim you do.”

      “If anyone else knew where it was, they would be threatened, too,” she said, “and I don’t want to put anybody else in danger.”

      Now he understood why she’d said what she had. “That’s why you don’t want me as your bodyguard. You don’t want me in danger.”

      Her face reddened even more. “Don’t think it’s because of some nonexistent crush I supposedly have on you,” she said, sputtering. She lowered her green-eyed gaze from his and stared down at his daughter. “It’s because of her.”

      That twinge struck Hart’s chest again.

      “She needs you,” Wendy said. “I don’t.”

      He flinched. But he couldn’t argue with her about Felicity. His daughter did need him. She really had no one else. Not now. Not since Hart’s mother had passed away a couple of years ago. She had been the only maternal figure his little girl had ever known when her own mother had failed to ever show any interest in her. After she’d had her, Monica had admitted to only getting pregnant so Hart wouldn’t divorce her. Abandoned as a child, she’d been determined that nobody else leave her; she was always the one who left. Unfortunately, she hadn’t left just him but their daughter, as well.

      “Felicity’s not going to lose me,” Hart said. He hoped his daughter knew that. “I’m not leaving her. I’m just doing my job. And I’m damn good at my job.” He’d been a good vice cop and then a detective, so being a bodyguard had come very naturally to him. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

      But he wondered if he was really telling the truth. He wasn’t worried about being physically hurt, though. He was worried about becoming too entangled with Wendy Thompson—like he had in her bed when he’d first sneaked through her window and had tried to keep her quiet. He was also worried about Wendy Thompson becoming too entangled with him and his daughter.

      No. Felicity couldn’t lose anyone else. So his little girl could not get attached to Wendy—because Hart was only going to pretend to be the evidence tech’s boyfriend. He had no intention of ever being involved with anyone ever again.

      All that type of involvement led to was betrayal and emotional pain. And that was the kind of pain he wasn’t going to risk experiencing ever again. He’d much rather risk his life than his heart.